


Filling My Heart Up With Golden Stories

by alchemystique



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-01
Updated: 2014-03-01
Packaged: 2018-01-14 03:57:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1251859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alchemystique/pseuds/alchemystique
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Killian is a fine weaver of words, but sometimes they aren't enough - it's only when drawing that he can fully grasp at the things he wishes he knew how to say.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Filling My Heart Up With Golden Stories

**Author's Note:**

> It's always been my headcanon that Milah taught Killian to draw, but I just cannot write Killian Jones without having an attack of feels. So. You're welcome.

_"I prefer drawing to talking. Drawing is faster, and leaves less room for lies." Le Corbusier_

Milah is nothing like he expected. They'd shared a few drunken nights at the tavern, and he'd watched her in awe, watched her drink and swear and altogether astound him and intrigue him in a way he's never been intrigued by a woman before. Oh, there've been plenty of them he likes just fine, firm breasts and tight arses and slim necks, but he's never met a woman he couldn't do without.

Milah. Milah is bright and clever, her laughter like starlight shining on a cold night, her wicked grin enough to bring a man to his knees, her bright blue eyes the kind he could get lost in the depths of.

(He is lost the moment she boards his ship, ignoring the cat calls of his men as she strides past him in the direction of his quarters as if she _owns_ the place, her gaze wicked as she darts a look over her shoulder at him, heated and sinful and full of downright devilish promise.) He wakes some time on the second night to find her at his desk, tears in her eyes and a catch to her breath, right hand scratching furiously at something on the surface. He's half asleep and groggy as he tries to make any sense of this terrifyingly strong woman crying into the silence of the night, and he nearly knocks his head into the wall as he sits up. "Darling," he says, and she looks up at him with a guilty start, eyes rimmed red and face distraught.

Her hand drops, and he sees the small stick of graphite roll across the desk.

"What is it?"

This is not at all what he signed up for. Milah was supposed to be adventurous and sure, firm and calculated, _fun_ , and he half-considers turning the bloody ship around and dropping her off at the next damn port. 

"I _left_ him," is all she says, and the words hit him like an anvil. She'd had a son, a son she'd now left with her cowardly imp of a husband, a son with her eyes. He rubs the sleep from his eyes as he slides from the bed, her eyes following his bare form as he makes his way across to her, and she makes a halfhearted attempt to cover her scribblings. 

Its a picture of the boy, the lost son she abandoned, the details lost in the dulled edge of her drawing utensil, but it's him, from what hazy memory he has of the boy. "I left him, Killian."

This is when he should roll his eyes, toss the sentiment away from him, slide his hand across her back and drag her back to bed, forget this awful mess and ignore her broken look when he sends her on her way at the docks. But something in him keens at the idea of her mourning the boy, something hopes this is how his father had felt (not likely), and so he slides a hand along her shoulder and uses a thumb to brush away her tears.

The next time they make port he knicks an ornately carved chest filled with charcoal, buys a stack of papers, presents them to her in a beautiful leather pouch. He is _gone_ at the look in her eye, and casts aside any idea of leaving her. He's a bloody fool.

She spends hours in his cabin throughout their days at sea, her fingers clenched tight and covered in black when he comes down to his quarters at night, and so he convinces her to have a drink with the crew, play a game of dice, tell her own bawdy tale to the gathered men, anything to drive the guilty look from her eye.

After a particularly nasty skirmish with one of the kings ships he finds her curled into the corner of the bed with the pouch laid out in her lap. Murphy had killed a boy that day, a cabin boy not more than ten, and it had sent Milah into hysterics. He'd had to sling her over his shoulder and toss her out of harms way as the crew gave her mutinous stares, but he'd tossed Murphy in the brig with the reminder to his crew that they did not _kill_ little boys (later he will find that order hilarious, as he loses four, five, ten men to the the Dreamshade covered blades of Pan's Lost Boys).

She gives him a hard glare, and he ignores it, sighs heavily as he falls into the chair before his desk, fingers tapping out a rather annoying rhythm against the wood until she finally starts to yell at him.

He takes up a shard of charcoal one night as she's laid out in the bed, the blanket pooled around her waist, the candle flickering in its lantern, hair falling over her shoulders, her eyes closed even though he knows she's not sleeping. The lines of her body take shape before his eyes, the curve of her cheek, the cleft of her collarbone, the soft edges of her breasts, the sharp jut of her nose, and she opens one eye groggily, peeking out at him from under the curtain of her raven hair. 

He spends a week trying to recapture the look, never quite succeeding, and from there on it's almost impossible to stop. He draws Liam in his fine uniform, smiling bright and free; sketches out the blurry edges of his mothers memory, trying to remember the way her bright red hair had looked, glistening on a summers day; a ship, sails in full wind; simple, comical depictions of his crew that make Milah laugh until tears form in her eyes. "You've a natural talent," she tells him even as she captures his face in profile, shadows deep and strong as the black lines form. 

She makes a habit of finding new and interesting places to sketch out - the palace in Agrabah, deserted, crumbling castles and lively bazaars, the din of a tavern, the jut of a cliffside military fort.

Soon he has books filled with drawings, and he shelves them carefully, eyes taking in the faces and the landscapes as he remembers all the adventures they've had together.

She becomes as much a part of the crew as he does, the men taking to her slowly, and then all at once as she proves herself a capable fighter, a marathon drinker, an excellent storyteller, a beautiful singer. They treat her as something between a sister and a commander, and he's never felt before as though the crew were a family, but here, with Milah at his side, he finally feels the bonds of their relationships strengthen, tied together by more than a lost captain and a kings betrayal.

And then.

He burns every drawing he or she has ever done, watching the ashes float away on the wind even as the bandages on his left arm scratch at his skin, spends weeks relearning his balance (months, years, centuries really, but that realization comes later), ignoring the worried stares of the crew. They all feel the keen loss of her, but he lashes out at them all, becomes hard, and unfriendly, waiting for the day he'll say something awful enough for them to mutiny, but they never do. 

They are more loyal to her memory than he has been, and he hates them for it, hates that they can move on and live their lives with her gone but still be able to remember her with fondness. 

It's more than a moon before he procures the cuff, his right arm burning mercilessly with the new ink blazed across it, and as he locks the hook in to place as tosses the bean into the ocean, he marvels at the fact that any of these men have stayed with him.

The boy is a complication he didn't see coming.

They'd talked of it rarely, but when it did come up, Killian and Milah had made grand plans to make it back to him, to steal him away in the dead of night and sail off, the three of them, start a new family, forge new paths, give up the sea in favor of a life in some far off land.

But Baelfire is as broken and lost as he is, and Captain Hook is not one for sentimentality.

He pulls out the locked away chest of charcoal and sketches her face from memory - the curling dark hair and the bright eyes, the strong jaw, the tilt of her lips and the swell of her cheeks, and he drinks himself into a stupor before stumbling to the bed, asleep before he can bother to pull the blankets over himself.

When Baelfire finds the drawing he has one sparkling moment of hope - Pan is just a boy, no matter how fearsome a foe he might be, and Killian - Killain will fight for this, for family, for some semblance of a life outside his own revenge. But it is not to be. 

_Killian_ disappears along with the boy, and it's literal lifetimes before he returns.

Its after the green monster they call "wicked" is defeated, after True Loves Kiss and the loss of Baelfire, after David Nolan has clapped him on the back and Snow White has smiled at him in amusement, after he's spent hours sitting with Emma's son, laughing and telling stories and mourning the loss of the boys father, after Emma has smiled radiantly at him and tangled her fingers into his, that he feels the urge to draw again.

"I didn't know you could draw!"

Henry is aflutter with energy as he strides across the diner, and he slams the cover of the book shut before Henry can get a good look at any of the drawings in it. "Aw, c'mon. It's not, like, gross stuff, is it?"

"Gross stuff?" His tongue falters over the awkward words, no flow or movement to the language of this land.

"You know, like...naked stuff." Henry turns beat red, and Killian sighs, thankful that he always leaves _those_ particular pictures on the ship. 

"Fine, but if word of these gets out to your grandfather I will find a way to make your life miserable."

"Yeah right, like you'd ever upset mom on purpose."

The boy is practically bobbing in his seat as he slides the book of sketches across the table, and Henry's breath catches on the first drawing - one of his mother. It's one he's gone back to many times, never quite capturing everything he wants to, but Henry seems to think it's close enough. 

Emma stares out of the page, her eyes both fierce and soft, her mouth set in a firm line, just the slightest hint of a curl at one end, belied only by the beginnings of a dimple in her cheek, her hair a wild mess as she curls Henry into her chest, and after a long, long moment, Henry meets his eyes and there is an understanding in there that seems far too complicated for a boy of twelve. 

Henry knows this Emma, this strong, compassionate, terrified, beautiful brilliant woman - it's the woman that fell in love with a son she'd abandoned because she didn't think she was enough, the woman who fought so hard to become a part of Storybrooke without realizing why, the woman on the beanstalk that had been so desperate to return to the boy sitting across from him, but it is also the woman who loved them both back to life, who was starting to be less careful with her laughter, the woman who had just yesterday beat them both soundly in a duel and then huffed angrily when she thought Hook had been easy on her (she'd trumped him soundly again an hour later, finally accepting her victory to Henry's loud cheers).

This is the closest he can get to explaining all the different ways he loves the broken woman who stitched him back together, and Henry seems to realize it, his fingers hovering carefully above the curve of her brow, the twist of her arm. "Let's don't tell her about this, just yet," he tells the boy, and Henry's brow furrows for a moment before understanding descends. He's an old soul, this one.

"Yeah, she's probably not ready for this."

When she arrives twenty minutes later, leaning into Killian's side as Henry tells her about his schoolday, Hook's book tucked carefully into the pocket of Henry's bag, Killian beams as her bright laughter tinkles across the diner, her expression a mirror image of the one in his drawing, and he thinks to himself - not yet. 

Not yet - but not quite as far off as he imagined.


End file.
